AURORA — Jamie Rohrs can’t recall the exact moment he lost his son — how 4-month-old Ethan went from resting in his arms to lying alone on the theater stairs as smoke, gunfire and screaming were all around.
His young family, new to Colorado, had decided to attend the midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” just hours before.
All wore Batman T-shirts — 25-year-old Rohrs; his fiancée, Patricia Legarreta; her 4-year-old daughter, Azariah; and baby Ethan.
When a man with a gas mask and guns entered theater No. 9 and started shooting, Rohrs and Legarreta had to decide in a matter of moments how to best save themselves and their children.
“You’re just thinking, ‘Am I in a dream?’ ” Rohrs said. ” ‘Am I in a nightmare?’ There are flashes. Everything is so loud. I am thinking, ‘Is this the day I die? Will this be the bullet that kills me?’ “
Speaking to the media Friday, Rohrs and Legarreta counted themselves fortunate — Ethan dozing in his father’s arms, Legarreta hurting from the shrapnel lodged in her leg, their family intact.
Rohrs, who hadn’t been feeling well, called his fiancée at about 6:30 p.m. Thursday and suggested they see the new Batman movie.
The young couple recently relocated to Denver after Rohrs graduated from the University of New Mexico pharmacy school and took a job at a local Walmart pharmacy.
After arriving at the theater at about 11:10 p.m., the family found three seats and the family settled in — Azariah occupying herself with Sour Patch Kids and SpongeBob candy just purchased from a 7-Eleven.
Legarreta scanned the theater, looking for the faces of other young children, hoping they were not alone in bringing theirs to a midnight movie, mindful that some people might think them “horrible parents.”
A few minutes before the lights went down, she nudged Rohrs: Look, she said, another infant. A 3-month-old in a car carrier.
The crowd was festive, cheering even at the preview of “The Hobbit” movie. One woman was dressed as Catwoman.
Then, the man in the gas mask walked in through the exit door.
He tossed something — a canister of some sort — over the audience and onto a stairwell. A girl screamed.
“You think, ‘Is this a prank?’ ” Legarreta said. “You hear about that sometimes at midnight movies.”
Soon enough, it became clear it was no prank.
“Get down!” shouted Rohrs, who was holding a sleeping Ethan.
Legarreta grabbed her daughter, who was sleeping on the seat next to her, and pulled her to the floor.
“Is this how I die?” Legarreta thought. “Is this how it ends?”
Rohrs has Ethan, she thought. OK. She stood up. Then she felt a tingling sensation in her leg. Her mistake had been moving. Others in the theater described the gunman shooting at anyone who moved.
“I think I got shot!” Legarreta yelled.
Behind her, a voice from a man: “So did I.”
In the smoke and dark and confusion, she searched for Rohrs.
When the gunfire started, Rohrs said, he tried to duck behind a seat. It was chaos. People were falling, crawling, stumbling all around.
He wondered what to do. If he stood up, would he be shot? Would Ethan be shot if he cried?
Rohrs still isn’t sure how he lost Ethan. One moment he was in his arms; the next, he was gone. Rohrs hurtled over some seats, found his way to the stairway, and ran.
“I’m disoriented,” he said. “I don’t know where my family is. Did they get out? Should I run back in? I can’t leave them there to die. I am thinking, ‘I lost my family. They’re dead.’ “
What he did not know is that he could not find Ethan because Legarreta had picked him up off the stairs.
Legarreta considered her options. Should I play dead? My kids are not going to die in here, she thought. She had only a moment to decide, and in that moment she grabbed her kids and ran for the lobby.
Just let me get them through the door, she thought.
All the while, she is thinking, “Who does this? Who goes into a movie theater filled with teenagers and starts shooting?”
She had no phone, no purse. In the parking lot, Rohrs was frantic. People were running everywhere.
Then, he sees an unfamiliar Colorado number come up on his cellphone: It is Legarreta, on a borrowed phone. The kids were fine.
At University of Colorado Hospital, Legarreta was treated for shrapnel wounds from her ankle to the upper thigh. Sitting at the hospital, she couldn’t shake the images of the other children she had seen in the theater, the faces she remembered, the 3-month-old, someone else’s baby.
“Innocent people, kids, lost their lives,” Patricia said. “I am so thankful and blessed my family got out and my kids are OK. I hurt for the families that did not come out together the way they came in.”
Eric Gorski: 303-954-1971, egorski@denverpost.com or twitter.com/egorski
